To be Literate

Oct 24, 2011 Editorial

There are some that insist that we are a very literate people: they point to statistics that declare that our ‘literacy’ is in the ninety percentile range and upwards. They ‘literally’ refer to those who can read and write. While even this statistic is doubtful, ‘literate’ has another –albeit related – meaning.
It could refer to people who are ‘educated and cultured’. While the Ministry of late has been struggling heroically to increase the nation’s ‘literacy’, few would disagree that the number of persons who could be pegged as ‘educated and cultured’ in Guyana today as a whole, has diminished considerably.
This has had a significantly deleterious effect on national life that may not be immediately apparent to the casual observer. Take, for instance, our Parliament, for which over a dozen parties are vying to occupy.
This body is supposed to be filled with sixty-five of the ‘best and brightest’ amongst us who have been chosen by all the people to represent them. To ‘represent’ them presumably means being capable of articulating their problems, hopes fears etc. in a manner that displays, at a minimum, some facility with the mandatory language of Parliamentary discourse – English. One would be shocked to observe what actually goes on within those hallowed halls nowadays.
Members routinely read their speeches, even though that is in violation of the rules of Parliament. The Speaker allows them to get away with their transgression presumably in acknowledgement of the reality of what being ‘literate’ in Guyana means: being able, in some instances, to even barely read out a pedestrian speech obviously written by someone else.
But what he actually does, of course, is to accept – and by extension, ensure – the perpetuation of mediocrity in the institution that is supposed not only to safeguard the rules that govern and define our society – but to actually frame those rules. And this acceptance of such mediocrity is in great measure contributing to our present national malaise.
The performances in Parliament also betray the lack of exposure of the vast majority of our representatives to learning. To wit, the exposure to literature and other bodies of knowledge accumulated over the past millennia that describe and analyse the human condition and the responses to the challenges of that condition.
The result, of course, is not only the pedestrian delivery alluded to earlier but the shallow treatment of the matters under discussion. The point is that if the representatives were to have even a passing acquaintance with the human record they would bring to bear the collective wisdom of mankind on the Guyanese situation rather than only their inevitably constricted knowledge gleaned within their short lifespan. While the latter knowledge is not to be scoffed at, it certainly benefits from being filtered through that which has preceded mankind.
But lest it be thought that we are picking on Parliamentarians, we emphasise we are merely using them to illustrate the state of our ‘literacy’ and some of its implications.
The same evidence of being strangers to the wider world characterises the ‘gaff’ at the street-corners. In the sixties there were at least half-a dozen newspapers that were all sold out and avidly consumed across the country.
Individuals who were widely read and articulate were creatures to be admired and talked about. Returning to Parliament, the debates in the sixties were of a much higher standard than what presently passes for debates. And so it is with the rest of society. We have become a philistine nation.
It is rightly said that if we do not have a word in our vocabulary for something, that ‘reality’ does not exist for us. To be ‘literate’ in the sense of being ‘educated and cultured’ does not mean veneration of elitism in the snobbish sense of the word but to be in the possession of words that encapsulate a wider range of concepts than those generated by our limited experiences. Concepts that may show us a way out of our quagmire. This is the option that to be ‘literate’ can offer.

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